Discovery of Temple Older Than Agriculture May Rewrite History

Since 1994, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt has been leading the excavation of Göbekli Tepe, a hilltop sanctuary in southeastern Turkey that dates to the Neolithic period of human history, about 11,000 years ago. Schmidt believes that it is the site of what may be the world’s oldest temple, an arrangement of stone megaliths that predates England’s better-known Stonehenge by roughly 6,000 years. According to a newly published article in Smithsonian magazine, Schmidt’s discovery may ultimately reshape our conception of how human civilization developed, by showing that efforts to construct massive religious sites actually led to the development of communities with complex social organization, rather than the other way around.

Smithsonian reports that the site was initially examined by archaeologists in the 1960s, but they errantly dismissed it as nothing more than a medieval cemetery. But when Schmidt first visited the site 14 years ago, he guessed that the hill’s gently rounded top, which was littered with broken limestone, contained far more significant secrets. When he and colleagues returned and began digging, they discovered stone pillars arranged in circles and evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. Carbon dating later confirmed that the site dates to about 9000 B.C.

Schmidt theorizes that Neolithic stonemasons used flint tools to chip away at softer limestone outcroppings, which they shaped into pillars and then carried a few hundred yards to the hill’s summit, where they were set in an upright position. Once the stone rings were created, the builders covered them over with dirt, and built others on top of them. Over the centuries, these layers gradually created the hilltop.

Massive quantities of animal bones found at Göbekli Tepe indicate that it was built by hunter-gatherers, and the site predates the first indications of agriculture in the region by about five centuries.

According to Smithsonian, Schmidt and others see this as evidence for a paradigm-shifting theory of civilization. “Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures,” the magazine writes. “But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.”

Beyond that, Göbekli Tepe may have an even deeper significance. "I think here we are face to face with the earliest representation of gods," Schmidt said earlier this year in an interview with the Guardian, a U.K. newspaper. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers.”